Today’s roundtable had two discussions, one about an online real estate venture, and the second about branded retail.

Find My Flat
First up, Robert Diefendorf from Hong Kong pitched Find My Flat, an online real estate marketplace for the Hong Kong market. Robert is struggling with the age-old issue of how to get his venture off the ground without too many resources. In advising him, I used the adage, “You can’t have the cake and eat it too!” The point is, either you hire people and get them to do what you need done, or you recruit partners who are willing to work for equity.VGS Design House
Then Suresh Nathan from New Delhi, India, pitched VGS Design House, a $2 million apparel production house that gets production orders from Indian and foreign retailers. Suresh wants to get into branded retail. My key question to him is whether he has brand positioning expertise on his team? Production houses generally do not have these resources. Without this expertise, however, it is very difficult to build a brand.

You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here:

As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8 a.m. PDT on:

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